WHAT’S the matter – seeing a man being put to death is too gross for you?

Many of you say you support the death penalty, but few of you apparently have the stomach for watching it get carried out. That’s why the televising of executions remains one of TV’s last taboos, even as the argument over capital punishment grows more heated.

In light of that, isn’t it about time we got to see exactly what it is we’re arguing about?

Guatemalans got their chance late last month. A vicious gang specializing in kidnapping had been terrorizing the country for nearly six years. Two of its members were sentenced to die for the 1997 kidnapping and murder of an 80-year-old liquor heiress.

Sentiment ran strongly in favor of making an example of the two, so their executions by lethal injection were aired live on every Guatemalan TV channel on the morning of June 29.

Viewers saw the convicts strapped to gurneys with intravenous tubes in their arms. One of them took 11 minutes to die. The cameras showed the screen of a heart monitor as he started to flat-line. His hand quivered and he lay still.

Back here in this country, the execution of two Guatemalan kidnappers wasn’t exactly big news, so the story was largely ignored. CNN, ABC, CBS and NBC all said they took a pass on showing snippets of the executions, parts of which were made available by Guatemalan television.

Some of the footage was seen, however, on a handful of Spanish-language newscasts in the U.S., and on a smattering of local TV stations that plucked the video off the satellite. Some of it turned up on Fox News Channel in a story reported by Eric Shawn about the morality of televising executions. The video was used sparingly and did not include footage of the flat-lining heart monitor or the moments when the convicts died.

A serious news story or documentary about capital punishment would, of course, be the most appropriate context for

airing all or part of an execution, either live or on tape.

It’s the potential for exploitation once the execution footage becomes widely available that worries some TV people. And their concerns are not unreasonable. Can you imagine what would happen if some unscrupulous producer were to collect an hour’s worth of execution videotape? Before long, you’d have a hideous clip show with a title like “Moment of Death – The World’s Most Amazing Executions: Caught on Tape!”

On the other hand, it’s those kinds of video-clip shows – with their car crashes and police shoot-outs – that have helped, for better or worse, to create an environment on TV in which anything goes.

And compared to the mayhem seen on those kinds of shows, the sight of convicts being put to death by lethal injection seems positively tame. It’s certainly no worse than the videotape aired on “60 Minutes” in November, 1998, of Dr. Jack Kevorkian euthanizing a man suffering from Lou Gehrig’s Disease.

Controversial as that show was, “60 Minutes” was demonstrating one of TV’s most powerful capabilities – namely, to take you places you can’t go and show you things you can’t otherwise see. Hard as it may have been to watch, the story helped propel forward the debate over euthanasia and doctor-assisted suicide.

TV should be at the forefront of shedding some light on the darkness of the death chamber too. After all, executing people is something we’ve made a part of our world. It’s time we ceased averting our eyes and took it all in.